Schroedin.... Rowling's Cat
I found a song recently where two lines just stood out: in good moments we are more than just the sum of our parts... we live in a belief that exists only on the other side of the future*. Somehow these two lines seem to perfectly describe... just about everyone who read the HP series and wasted at least one thought on how it will end. Harry Potter is so many things (including but not limited to: a children's book series and a cash cow), but it is also....
Honestly?
Harry Potter is something Joanne Kathleen Rowling will never get, will never understand.
She is the one with the answers. That's in her job description. We don't have the answers. We only have hope and belief.
Rowling knows what's going to happen. She is what's going to happen. We think.... No, we believe what's going to happen. We hope what's going to happen.
Harry Potter is Schroedinger's Cat. There is a box and we know that there is a cat in there. We don't know if the cat will be alive or dead when we open the box. We don't know its colour or gender. But until we know, we fill that box with so much hope, so much belief, so much of ourselves, it's unbelievable.
Our hope keeps that cat alive or kills it, it changes the cat's colour and transgenders it while it's still in the box.
There is so much hope in that box that its transformative powers go beyond it. Of course it doesn't change a leaf in Borneo or a page of Rowling's books, but it changes our perception of canon, of reality.
It transforms my perception of canon so much that I don't like Columbus' picture book version of Harry Potter, because it is a interpretation worthy of Five Go Off to Camp, while I believe Harry Potter is closer to Tolkien, Lewis and Pullman and even James Joyce than it is to Enid Blyton.
And when Lizardlaugh sees a connection (and likes it) between a scene in movie!PoA and Ron is Dumbledore, then Cuaron pulls a string that begins in Lizardlaugh's copy of PS/SS and ends in her vision of Book Seven.
Rowling has one is; we have five million could be's, might be's, should be's, hope it's going to be's. Five million strings that can be pulled. That's music Rowling cannot hear. Because what makes this music so beautiful and worth listening to are not the ideas themselves, it's the amount of hope and belief in them. Rowling cannot share this, cannot feel this, because she has no reason to feel hope and belief. She doesn't need to, she has the definite answers.
And that's why she will never understand what Harry Potter means to so many people.
* that's a rough translation
Honestly?
Harry Potter is something Joanne Kathleen Rowling will never get, will never understand.
She is the one with the answers. That's in her job description. We don't have the answers. We only have hope and belief.
Rowling knows what's going to happen. She is what's going to happen. We think.... No, we believe what's going to happen. We hope what's going to happen.
Harry Potter is Schroedinger's Cat. There is a box and we know that there is a cat in there. We don't know if the cat will be alive or dead when we open the box. We don't know its colour or gender. But until we know, we fill that box with so much hope, so much belief, so much of ourselves, it's unbelievable.
Our hope keeps that cat alive or kills it, it changes the cat's colour and transgenders it while it's still in the box.
There is so much hope in that box that its transformative powers go beyond it. Of course it doesn't change a leaf in Borneo or a page of Rowling's books, but it changes our perception of canon, of reality.
It transforms my perception of canon so much that I don't like Columbus' picture book version of Harry Potter, because it is a interpretation worthy of Five Go Off to Camp, while I believe Harry Potter is closer to Tolkien, Lewis and Pullman and even James Joyce than it is to Enid Blyton.
And when Lizardlaugh sees a connection (and likes it) between a scene in movie!PoA and Ron is Dumbledore, then Cuaron pulls a string that begins in Lizardlaugh's copy of PS/SS and ends in her vision of Book Seven.
Rowling has one is; we have five million could be's, might be's, should be's, hope it's going to be's. Five million strings that can be pulled. That's music Rowling cannot hear. Because what makes this music so beautiful and worth listening to are not the ideas themselves, it's the amount of hope and belief in them. Rowling cannot share this, cannot feel this, because she has no reason to feel hope and belief. She doesn't need to, she has the definite answers.
And that's why she will never understand what Harry Potter means to so many people.
* that's a rough translation